Latest news with #Infinitis
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Milwaukee man's car stolen by thieves using a reprogrammed key fob — what to know about this alarming trend
Austin Washington's car keys were at his apartment in the Milwaukee suburb of Shorewood. However, thieves were still able to drive off with his vehicle. They broke into his parked Infiniti car through the sunroof and stole it using a reprogrammed key fob. Thanks to Jeff Bezos, you can now become a landlord for as little as $100 — and no, you don't have to deal with tenants or fix freezers. Here's how I'm 49 years old and have nothing saved for retirement — what should I do? Don't panic. Here are 5 of the easiest ways you can catch up (and fast) Nervous about the stock market in 2025? Find out how you can access this $1B private real estate fund (with as little as $10) Last month, Washington told WISN 12 News he felt 'violated.' "Somebody was in your car, going through your stuff, stole your car," he said. "I thought I was doing everything right with the information I knew about vehicles. I had no idea about these fob re-programmers." Fortunately, police found his car dumped a few miles away, but they told the news network such high-tech car theft is on the rise across Milwaukee. Thieves use key fob programmers to get cars to start, and then simply drive away. Milwaukee police told WISN 12 News there have been at least 19 reported cases of car thefts using this method within the first three months of 2025. Keyless, or re-programmed car keys, is a growing method of car theft. News reports show that police in different parts of the country, like San Fernando Valley or Oakland County, have issued warnings about this problem. Multiple locksmiths told WISN 12 News that thieves steal key programmers from businesses like theirs in order to steal cars with keyless ignitions. Itay Rahamim, owner of Milwaukee Automotive Locksmith, showed reporters how the theft works on a Lexus. Thieves either go through the sunroof, break the window, or find some other way to get inside the vehicle. They then find the vehicle's on-board diagnostic (OBD) port and plug in the key programmer. It's typically under the steering wheel, close to the gas and brake pedals. Once it's successfully plugged in, the thief can then program a new key to the car. It was about 40 seconds from the time Rahamim opened the door to the car to when he started it using the reprogrammer. Read more: This is how American car dealers use the '4-square method' to make big profits off you — and how you can ensure you pay a fair price for all your vehicle costs Any car that uses a key fob is susceptible to such theft, but some vehicles are more vulnerable than others. Nissans and Infinitis are the most targeted, police told WISN 12 News, but they are not exactly sure why. Rahamim told reporters that 2007 to 2017 models of Honda, Nissan, Infiniti, Dodge, Chrysler, Lexus, and Toyota are more easily stolen The reason? These cars don't have a wait time for someone to start the vehicle after they've reprogrammed a new key. Ford and GM vehicles are among those that do not start immediately, and so they are harder to steal, according to him. Vehicle thefts nationwide decreased 17% to 850,708 in 2024, dropping below the one million mark for the first time since 2021, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB). But owners should still take precautions. In an April Facebook post, Milwaukee Police said it has noticed an increase in motorvehicle thefts and drivers should consider protecting their car by installing a lock over their car's OBD port. These types of locks are typically made from a piece of metal or strong plastic that covers the OBD port and makes sure it can only be accessed with a special key. A wheel lock can also deter thieves. The National Insurance Crime Bureau recommends taking the 'layered approach' to protection and has a list of ways owners can try to prevent car theft.. If you discover your vehicle has been stolen, file a police report right away. Provide as many details as possible like information about your car, where it was parked and when you last saw it. Call your auto insurance company and report the loss. Insurers should be able to help if you have comprehensive coverage. Even if your vehicle is recovered, your insurance company may pay to repair it or pay you the actual cash value if it's been declared a total loss. Want an extra $1,300,000 when you retire? Dave Ramsey says this 7-step plan 'works every single time' to kill debt, get rich in America — and that 'anyone' can do it Rich, young Americans are ditching the stormy stock market — here are the alternative assets they're banking on instead Robert Kiyosaki warns of a 'Greater Depression' coming to the US — with millions of Americans going poor. But he says these 2 'easy-money' assets will bring in 'great wealth'. How to get in now Here are 5 'must have' items that Americans (almost) always overpay for — and very quickly regret. How many are hurting you? This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.
Forbes
21-04-2025
- Automotive
- Forbes
The Man Who Will Make Nick Saban A Billionaire
Joe Agresti was on a conference call in his Baton Rouge office when an unknown number left a message. Nick Saban, the legendary University of Alabama football coach, was calling. He wanted to open a car dealership. 'I thought it was a prank call,' Agresti, now 52, recalls. 'I thought one of my buddies left me a bullshit prank Saban thing.' Within a few weeks, Saban and Agresti—whose Mercedes-Benz of Baton Rouge was considered one of the nation's best-run dealers—met for a 30-minute sitdown that lasted four hours. The next day, they agreed to go into business together. Now their Dream Motor Group sells 20,000 Mercedes-Benzes a year, plus a couple hundred Infinitis and Ferraris, across nine dealerships in Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Texas and Florida, where the pair bought two Miami-area stores in a $730 million deal in 2023. Annual revenues are nearing $2 billion. 'It's one of the best decisions I ever made,' Saban says of the partnership. 'It's been really good for both of us.' So good, in fact, that Agresti—who runs the day-to-day and owns majority stakes in the dealerships—is now a billionaire, worth $1.1 billion. Saban, a minority partner in many of the ventures, likely isn't far behind, meaning he's set to become the first billionaire college football coach, thanks in no small part to a little-known car salesman with big ambition. A huge personality who races through his story at a mile a minute, but doesn't spare any detail, Agresti pulled himself onto the World's Billionaires list by fixating on operations, obsessing over corporate culture—and leveraging connections, from his early days as an accountant at Arthur Andersen to teaming up with Saban. Over the course of a three-hour call, Agresti mentions 14 'buddies,' a half-dozen 'friends,' three 'good dudes,' one 'excellent dude,' and names four people his 'best friend.' 'Coach and I get deals left and right because of our connections,' says Agresti, phoning from Miami in late March, after spending the morning negotiating a deal to expand into a sixth state. 'Right now we're at our all-time biggest—all our chips are on the table.' Agresti wasn't always going for broke. He grew up in working-class North Bergen, New Jersey, just outside Manhattan, the son of an architectural woodworker father and a nurse mother, who also manned the family's small apple orchard when they moved 60 miles west, near the Pennsylvania border. A wrestler, he chose Rutgers over Bucknell because he got a partial scholarship and his parents were willing to chip in more for the cheaper school. He studied accounting, deeming it a safe choice, and took a CPA gig in the metro New York office of Big Six firm Arthur Andersen. 'It was conservative, it was a guaranteed job, it was pretty good money coming out of college,' he says. He quickly got ambitious, handling due diligence for mergers and acquisitions, including auto deals, then parlaying his skills into a high-level operations job with dealership giant (and Andersen client) Asbury Automotive, eventually managing Asbury's Mississippi business. Then, in 2004, an Asbury exec gave him a chance to branch out on his own by investing in, and running, a Mercedes dealership in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. To buy a 20% stake, a 31-year-old Agresti chipped in his $200,000 life savings, convinced his parents to take out a $300,000 mortgage on their house and borrowed the remaining $500,000 from the exec. He waited out most of a yearlong noncompete agreement with Asbury by learning how to run everything from the wash rack to the financing department at a 'buddy's' Subaru dealership in Maine, driving back and forth from his home in New Jersey every week. Within a few years, he had quadrupled the Baton Rouge car lot's sales, bought out his partner for a highly-leveraged $32 million and caught the eye of higher-ups at Mercedes, who eventually awarded him the right to open a new dealership near Houston in 2013. Around then, Saban, whose father had owned a small service station in West Virginia, was mulling going into the car business himself. The coach—who had already won a national title with LSU, three with Alabama and was on the way to winning three more with the Crimson Tide—had done several events with Mercedes, which built its first major plant outside Germany near Tuscaloosa, not far from Alabama's campus. Execs gave Saban a couple of star dealership operators to talk with about partnering. He called Agresti, who won him over with his focus on customer service and creating the right culture, something that resonated with Saban, who's famously known for emphasizing process over results. 'I interviewed Joe and didn't interview anybody else,' Saban tells Forbes. 'It's like interviewing a good offensive coordinator—you just know it's the right guy.' The duo took over a Mercedes-Benz dealership in Birmingham in 2014, expanded to Nashville with Mercedes-Benz of Music City in 2017, and built a palatial dealership with an in-store bakery on the other side of Birmingham in 2018. They added a Ferrari dealership, Prancing Horse of Nashville, to their stable in 2022, complete with three guest libraries and a cocktail room. Then, in 2023, they made waves with the $730 million agreement to buy two Miami-area Mercedes megastores. Saban, who collected nearly $150 million in (pretax) earnings over his 51 years in football before his 2024 retirement, is a full partner, but Agresti—who splits his year traveling between homes he keeps near all his dealerships—runs the daily operations. He and Saban speak upwards of three times a day about ideas as big as expansion plans or as small as how a specific manager is performing. A third partner in Dream Motor Group, former Mercedes-Benz USA CEO Steve Cannon, has joined them on recent deals. 'Joe operates at a different cadence than most people,' Cannon says. 'He's pure entrepreneurial energy.' Agresti is obsessed with company culture, personally interviewing as many potential new hires as possible and asking them questions like, 'What's one thing you've done in your life that has changed somebody else's life?' If employees spot a Mercedes on the side of the road, he expects them to stop and help, customer or not. He's even more obsessed with the financial details. The former accountant compiles his own monthly statement for every store. 'If you say to me, 'How's March going?' I can look and say Cutler Bay sold 13 cars last night—eight new, five pre-owned. I can tell you who the salespeople were and I can tell you that Evelyn bought one. I know every name, what car we sold, how much money we made, and then I track them on parabolic curves to make sure that we're not overcharging anybody or undercharging anybody.' Besides the dealerships, Agresti has a fledgling bourbon company in Kentucky (Saban and Cannon are partners) and created a medical supplies business, Dream Medical Group, that sold nine figures worth of PPE during the Covid-19 pandemic. Next up: Agresti, decrying big government and the 'nanny state' of the Covid-era, says he's considering running for federal office in Alabama. 'The way it happened was such a turnoff to me as an American,' he says. 'That's when I started to seriously think about politics.' He has close ties to senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), who he says asked him to put together a weekly meeting with auto industry leaders to help shape automotive policy, including Moreno's proposed Transportation Freedom Act. President Trump's tariffs might raise car prices, and Mercedes has reportedly considered pulling its entry-level vehicles from the U.S. market in response, but Agresti seems unconcerned, telling Forbes that sales at his dealerships spiked 30% after the tariffs were announced as buyers rushed to pick up cars before any price increases. In the long-run, he expects Trump to offer a credit for cars manufactured in the U.S. and exported elsewhere, softening the blow to automakers. 'I trust him,' Agresti says. 'Is he doing it perfectly? No one will ever know. Let's see how it ends.' In the meantime, Agresti says he, Saban and Cannon are eyeing investments in 'three or four' professional sports teams in Tennessee (he won't say which) and an 'automotive-related' business in South America. Then there's the agreement to expand his dealership empire into a sixth state and 'a whole myriad of different brands' besides Mercedes, Infiniti and Ferrari, which the hyperactive Agresti signed 'two minutes' before his call with Forbes—and continued to negotiate during our interview. 'Sorry pal, this is rude,' he says at one point, going uncharacteristically silent while he answers a text, 'but I don't want to miss this deal.'
Axios
05-02-2025
- Automotive
- Axios
CMPD: Kia challenge is declining, Infiniti thefts on the rise
The Kia and Hyundai theft trend that has plagued Charlotte for years appears to be slowly dropping off — but another car is being targeted. Why it matters: Car thefts were down locally by 8% in 2024 compared to the year prior, with auto thefts involving Kias and Hyundais falling 15%. CMPD reported 7,445 stolen cars in 2024, of which 4,557 were Hyundais and Kias. The department made 998 total arrests for vehicle thefts, including 694 juvenile auto theft arrests — an 18% decline from 2023. Yes, but: Chief Johnny Jennings said at a business event last month that, "for some reason," CMPD is seeing a rise in Infinitis being stolen. He suspects it has to do with the technology. "Back in the day, you used to have to hot wire things," he said. "Now they're using USBs ... and everything else to steal a car." Jennings warns against leaving a car running in the driveway or keeping a spare key inside. Catch up quick: A social media challenge in 2022 fueled a national trend of stealing Kia and Hyundai cars. TikTok users posted step-by-step instructions for stealing one of the cars with a USB cord. Certain models have serious design flaws, namely the lack of engine immobilizers, which prevent engines from starting without a key. Zoom in: CMPD has made a targeted effort to stop the thefts. At a drive-thru event last February, the department partnered with Hyundai Motor America to offer software updates and free steering wheel locks. More than 670 car owners participated. The big picture: Reducing the number of car thefts cuts down on Charlotte's overall crime rate since they've accounted for such a large portion of it. CMPD is reporting a 4% drop in property crime in 2024, largely due to the decrease in auto property crimes. Incidents of larceny from cars were down 10%, from 11,390 in 2023 to 10,271 in 2024. 1,101 guns were stolen during those instances, a drop of 9% from last year. Go deeper: Is Charlotte becoming unsafe? We asked the top 3 local law enforcement officers Charlotte shootings into homes are rampant Why Charlotte police are driving around with their blue lights on Charlotte police to expand successful civilian crash response program CMPD cracks down on street takeovers
